end of the year reflections

1. What are some things you accomplished this year that you are proud of?

Some things I accomplished this year that I was proud of was the school gardens, tutoring the 1st grade students, working with other teachers on  improving writing skills, finally getting to see the new playground built from a grant I helped with two other ladies, and helping my BFF and teacher implement a literacy night at our school.

It was the second year for our 25 garden beds and it was a major growing success as well as improving my student's learning.  I have been helping with after school tutoring in the past but this year I felt it was more successful in student growth.  I assessed each of the students to see where they were at and then worked with them on the skills they were lacking in.  I created fun ways for them to learn but not thinking they were learning.  I worked a group of teachers and creating an assessment tool in writing to assess our students with.  I created the pre-k's writing assessment to help me and my fellow peer see and track our students progress in writing.  It was a really learning experience for me and looking at writing at a different way.  Our school received $34,000 from the Jimmie Johnson Foundation to help our school get a new playground. And Lastly my BFF was creating a large evening literacy night for our parents plus ribbon cutting ceremony for our playground and our school community.

20 Questions to ask myself at the End of the Year

1.  What are some things you accomplished this year that you are proud of?


2. What is something you tried in your classroom this year for the first time? How did it go?


3. What is something you found particularly frustrating this year?


4. Which student in your class do you think showed the most improvement? Why do you think this student did so well?


5. What is something you would change about this year if you could?


6. What is one way that you grew professionally this year?


7. Who amongst your colleagues was the most helpful to you?


8. What has caused you the most stress this year?


9. When was a time this year when you felt joyful and/or inspired about the work that you do?


10. What do you hope your students remember most about you as a teacher?


11. In what ways were you helpful to your colleagues this year?


12. What was the most valuable thing you learned this year?


13. What was the biggest mistake you made this year? How can you avoid making the same mistake in the future?


14. What is something you did this year that went better than you thought it would?


15. What part of the school day is your favorite? Why?


16. What were your biggest organizational challenges this year?


17. Who was your most challenging student? Why?


18. In what ways did you change the lives of your students this year?


19. Pretend that you get to set your own salary for this past year based on the job that you did. How much do you feel that you earned (the number you come up with should be in no way based on your current salary - rather, come up with a number that truly reflects how you should be compensated for your work this year)?


20. Knowing what you know now, would you still choose to be a teacher if you could go back in time and make the choice again? If the answer is "no,"  is there a way for you to choose a different path now?

preparing for the 2012-2013 school year

I have been pinning from Pinterest and came across some really good ideas and spent the afternoon working on a few anchor charts.  I have used charts in my classroom but not like these.  As the end of a school ends and the new one gets ready to begin, I reflect on the school year as to ways to improve myself, my teaching and student learning.  So some of these charts I think will help my ELL students have a visual as well as the non-ELL students.

 This anchor chart I hopes illustrates a good listener.  It lets them know the points of a good listener: eyes watching, ears listening, mouth waits to talk, hands in lap, raise hand to talk, face forward, and sit criss cross apple sauce.

This anchor chart I plan to use with our 3rd grade reading buddies.  It will help our reading buddies see how to sit and what they can do with their little buddy.  They can choose a book together, echo read, ask questions about a certain page, and practice sitting EEKK (elbow-elbow knee knee) with the book in the middle of their laps.

 My students are using unifex cubes to measure our plants in our garden bed as well as the bed itself.

Green Thumb Garden Gals

My BFF and I will be presenting next week at the ELL Summer Summit in Tulsa.  We are going to be sharing our start with our school gardens and how we use them in our classroom.  I am excited this will be my second presentation to my peers (my first was on how to get resources for your classroom through Donors choose).

The First year of our school gardens was mainly the set up phase.  This year we actually got to use it in the classroom to teach our students through a variety of methods from science, math, to writing.